CT Biz Blogs

My blogging pal and excellent writer, Liz Strauss, has been on a roll over at Successful Blog! She’s been pouring out so much great advice, tips, tools, and food for thought, that I’ve been tempted to bookmark every post.

She’s written some excellent posts on ideas for writing, which are must reading for beginning bloggers who have trouble putting words on the screen (as do we all, from time to time).

Check out this tool to help you organize your words.

She’s also got some great tips for making sure that your blog posts are search engine friendly. I didn’t see it until after I’d written a post about keywords, so I’m going back to add a link to that article there, too.

The important thing to realize is to not focus on search engine optimization (SEO) when you first write a post — you’re writing for people after all. They are the ones who you’ll be talking to, not Google, or Yahoo, or any of the other search engines.

That being said, once you’ve written a post, it makes sense to have it do as much work as possible for you — think of it as networking opportunities. Networking has gotten a bad rap, because a lot of people are networking spammers — their idea of networking is to shove business cards in your face, or shout “me, me, over here!” The good kind is the “connect-the-dots” kind, where you try to help others and show the ways you can contribute at the same time.

As Liz says:

Prorating the time that I spent gathering ideas, I’ve probably spent 60-90 minutes on this one post. Time is money, and I think of that time spent as an investment. Now is when I make sure that investment pays off. I’ve made a short Pre-Flight Publishing list that I run down, before I pass say, “Go.”

Blogging is work, but the work you do can pay off in many ways, over time. Don’t think of it as writing or marketing. Think of it as creating opportunities to help people get to know you, your ideas, and how you can help them.